Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Prophet, Martyr, Spy, by Eric Metaxas, Thomas Nelson, 2010
Author of Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was the Lutheran pastor and theologian who participated in the plot to kill Hitler. When the plot was discovered, he was imprisoned and just 3 weeks before the Germans surrendered, he was executed.
That?s the short version of this detailed 550-page biography. The subtitles hint at the more complete story of this incredibly courageous man.
As a pastor and prophet, he spoke out against the Nazified Lutheran church when it began purging Christian pastors of Jewish heritage. He helped form the alternative Confessing Church where he served as a pastor and led an illegal underground seminary to train new pastors.
He was a spy for the Abwehr, German military intelligence. The Abwehr organized several failed attempts to kill Hitler including the bomb placed by Col. Claus von Stauffenberg in the famous Valkyrie plot.
Bonhoeffer was martyred on April 8, 1945, the first Sunday after Easter. Before going to the gallows, he preached a sermon for his fellow prisoners based on 1 Peter 1:3 ?Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.?
Years later the prison doctor who witnessed Bonhoeffer?s death reported: ?In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.? Bonhoeffer had always considered death as ?the last station on the road to freedom.?
This is a long and detailed book and I often wondered why the author was spending so much time on Bonhoeffer?s early childhood and student days. To fully appreciate the depth of his faith and his courage in the face of Nazi terror, you must understand how his character developed in his early life.
